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Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: NY Times Abandons Liberalism for Activism - 0 views

nymag.com/...s-liberalism-for-activism.html

brexit uk identify drag NYT propaganda white supremacy ideology activism liberalism American idea culture crisis

shared by Javier E on 14 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • “Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written.”
  • How can an enduring “ideal” — like, say, freedom or equality — be “false” at one point in history and true in another? You could of course say that the ideals of universal equality and individual liberty in the Declaration of Independence were belied and contradicted in 1776 by the unconscionable fact of widespread slavery, but that’s very different
  • (They were, in fact, the most revolutionary leap forward for human freedom in history.) You could say the ideals, though admirable and true, were not realized fully in fact at the time, and that it took centuries and an insanely bloody civil war to bring about their fruition
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • the New York Times wants to do more than that. So it insists that the very ideals were false from the get-go — and tells us this before anything else.
  • America was not founded in defense of liberty and equality against monarchy, while hypocritically ignoring the massive question of slavery. It was founded in defense of slavery and white supremacy, which was masked by highfalutin’ rhetoric about universal freedom. That’s the subtext of the entire project, and often, also, the actual text.
  • Hence the replacing of 1776 (or even 1620 when the pilgrims first showed up) with 1619 as the “true” founding. “True” is a strong word. 1776, the authors imply, is a smoke-screen to distract you from the overwhelming reality of white supremacy as America’s “true” identity
  • some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy,” Hannah-Jones writes. That’s a nice little displacement there: “some might argue.” In fact, Nikole Hannah-Jones is arguing it, almost every essay in the project assumes it — and the New York Times is emphatically and institutionally endorsing it.
  • Hence the insistence that everything about America today is related to that same slavocracy — biased medicine, brutal economics, confounding traffic, destructive financial crises, the 2016 election, and even our expanding waistlines!
  • The NYT editorializes: “No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed … it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.” Finally! All previous accounts of American history have essentially been white lies, the NYT tells us, literally and figuratively.
  • A special issue dedicated to exposing the racial terror-state in America before and after Reconstruction is extremely worthwhile
  • In a NYT town hall recently leaked to the press, a reporter asked the executive editor, Dean Baquet, why the Times doesn’t integrate the message of the 1619 Project into every single subject the paper covers:
  • I’m wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting … I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country.”
  • It’s a good point, isn’t it? If you don’t believe in a liberal view of the world, if you hold the doctrines of critical race theory, and believe that “all of the systems in the country” whatever they may be, are defined by a belief in the sub-humanity of black Americans, why isn’t every issue covered that way?
  • “One reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.” In other words, the objective was to get liberal readers to think a little bit more like neo-Marxists.
  • The New York Times, by its executive editor’s own admission, is increasingly engaged in a project of reporting everything through the prism of white supremacy and critical race theory, in order to “teach” its readers to think in these crudely reductionist and racial terms.
  • It’s as much activism as journalism. And that’s the reason I’m dwelling on this a few weeks later. I’m constantly told that critical race theory is secluded on college campuses, and has no impact outside of them … and yet the newspaper of record, in a dizzyingly short space of time, is now captive to it
  • Its magazine covers the legacy of slavery not with a variety of scholars, or a diversity of views, but with critical race theory, espoused almost exclusively by black writers, as its sole interpretative mechanism.
  • I think that view deserves to be heard. The idea that the core truth of human society is that it is composed of invisible systems of oppression based on race (sex, gender, etc.), and that liberal democracy is merely a mask to conceal this core truth, and that a liberal society must therefore be dismantled in order to secure racial/social justice is a legitimate worldview.
  • This is therefore, in its over-reach, ideology masquerading as neutral scholarship
  • Take a simple claim: no aspect of our society is unaffected by the legacy of slavery. Sure. Absolutely. Of course. But, when you consider this statement a little more, you realize this is either banal or meaningless. The complexity of history in a country of such size and diversity means that everything we do now has roots in many, many things that came before us.
  • hat would be to engage in a liberal inquiry into our past, teasing out the nuances, and the balance of various forces throughout history, weighing each against each other along with the thoughts and actions of remarkable individuals — in the manner of, say, the excellent new history of the U.S., These Truths by Jill Lepore.
  • the NYT chose a neo-Marxist rather than liberal path to make a very specific claim: that slavery is not one of many things that describe America’s founding and culture, it is the definitive one.
  • Arguing that the “true founding” was the arrival of African slaves on the continent, period, is a bitter rebuke to the actual founders and Lincoln. America is not a messy, evolving, multicultural, religiously infused, Enlightenment-based, racist, liberating, wealth-generating kaleidoscope of a society. It’s white supremacy, which started in 1619, and that’s the key to understand all of it.
  • it is extremely telling that this is not merely aired in the paper of record (as it should be), but that it is aggressively presented as objective reality. That’s propaganda, directed, as we now know, from the very top — and now being marched through the entire educational system to achieve a specific end
  • between Sohrab Ahmari, representing the Trumpy post-liberals, and David French, a Reagan-style fusionist, it was a rare moment of agreement. They both took it as a premise that Drag Queen Story Hour — a relatively new trend in which drag queens read kids stories in local libraries — was a problem they both wish didn’t exist
  • both French and Ahmari have no idea what they are talking about.
  • drag queens are clowns. They are not transgender (or haven’t been until very, very recently). They are men, mainly gay, who make no attempt to pass as actual women, and don’t necessarily want to be women, but dress up as a caricature of a woman. Sure, some have bawdy names, and in the context of a late night gay bar, they can say some bawdy things. But they’re not really about sex at all. They’re about costume and play
  • Children love drag queens the way they love clowns or circuses or Halloween or live Disney characters in Disney World. It’s dress-up fun.
  • I think the cost-benefit analysis still favors being a member of the E.U. But it is not crazy to come to the opposite conclusion.
  • o how on Earth is this a sign of the cultural apocalypse? These clowns read children’s stories to kids and their parents, and encourage young children to read books. This is the work of the devil?
  • allow me to suggest a parallel version of Britain’s situation — but with the U.S. The U.S. negotiated with Canada and Mexico to create a free trade zone called NAFTA, just as the U.K. negotiated entry to what was then a free trade zone called the “European Economic Community” in 1973
  • Now imagine further that NAFTA required complete freedom of movement for people across all three countries. Any Mexican or Canadian citizen would have the automatic right to live and work in the U.S., including access to public assistance, and every American could live and work in Mexico and Canada on the same grounds. This three-country grouping then establishes its own Supreme Court, which has a veto over the U.S. Supreme Court. And then there’s a new currency to replace the dollar, governed by a new central bank, located in Ottawa.
  • How many Americans would support this
  • The questions answer themselves. It would be unimaginable for the U.S. to allow itself to be governed by an entity more authoritative than its own government
  • It would signify the end of the American experiment, because it would effectively be the end of the American nation-state. But this is precisely the position the U.K. has been in for most of my lifetim
  • It’s not a strip show, for Pete’s sake. It’s a laugh, designed for the entire family. And yes, Dave Chappelle, the sanest man in America at the moment, is right. Men dressed obviously as women are first and foremost funny.
  • It is requiring the surrender and pooling of more and more national sovereignty from its members. And in this series of surrenders, Britain is unique in its history and identity. In the last century, every other European country has experienced the most severe loss of sovereignty a nation can experience: the occupation of a foreign army on its soil. Britain hasn’t
  • this very resistance has come to define the character of the country, idealized by Churchill in the country’s darkest hour. Britain was always going to have more trouble pooling sovereignty than others. And the more ambitious the E.U. became, the more trouble the U.K. had.
  • that is Boris Johnson’s core case: the people decided, the parliament revoked Article 50, and so it is vital for democracy that the U.K. exit without any continuing hassle or delay. If parliament is seen as dismissing the result of the referendum, then the parliament will effectively be at war with the people as a whole, and he will rally the people against them. It’s near perfect populism. His job is to get what the people voted for done, despite the elites. And if that is the central message of the coming election campaign he will not only win, but handily.
Javier E

Sohrab Ahmari and the Rise of America's Orbánists - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...591697

liberal democracy right-wing authoritarian culture history

shared by Javier E on 15 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • The past few weeks have witnessed a nasty internecine fight among religious conservatives about whether liberal democracy’s time has passed
  • French and Ahmari. They are yelling at each other in a walled garden; conservative pundits in ideological magazines have little influence over a base whose opinions are guided by the commercial incentives of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, and the partisan imperatives of the Republican Party
  • French’s adherence to liberal democracy is a commitment to a set of rules under which these goals can be pursued in a pluralistic society: through public discourse, the courts, and the ballot box. For Ahmari and his ilk, this is insufficient. He seems to believe not only that the state should always settle such disputes in his favor, but that it should prevent cultural and political expressions he finds distasteful.
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  • In a since-deleted tweet, Ahmari praised Alabama Public Television for refusing to air an episode of the cartoon Arthur in which the titular character’s male teacher marries another man; his attack on French was preceded by another since-deleted eruption, over Drag Queen Story Hour at a public library, in which he cried, “To hell with liberal order”; and he has since suggested the humanities should be defunded because “they may be lost to us for good.
  • the United States that illiberals would like to see: one that resembles Orbán’s Hungary, where rigged electoral systems ensure that political competition is minimal, the press is tightly controlled by an alliance between corporations and the state on behalf of the ruling party, national identity is defined in religious and ethnic terms, and cultural expressions are closely policed by the state to ensure compliance with that identity
  • Although the intraconservative critiques leveled by Ahmari and his allies sometimes take on the language of opposition to market fundamentalism, they are not truly opposed to the concentration of power and capital.
  • These critics observe the decline in wages and community that has resulted from this concentration, and propose to do nothing at all about it other than seize that power for themselves
  • The same sort of protests that the right decries as illiberal when deployed against right-wing speakers on college campuses are suddenly a legitimate tactic when used against Drag Queen Story Hour. The objective here, in Ahmari’s words, is to defeat “the enemy,” not adhere to principle
  • Indeed, the illiberal faction in this debate retains Trump as its champion precisely because the president is willing to use the power of the state for sectarian ends, despite being an exemplar of the libertinism to which it is supposedly implacably opposed
  • Sohrab Ahmari, writing at First Things, attacked National Review’s David French for adhering to a traditional commitment to liberal democracy while “the overall balance of forces has tilted inexorably away from us.”
  • the support Ahmari has drawn suggests that the conservative intelligentsia will offer less resistance to authoritarianism than it did in 2015 and 2016.
  • even before Trump ran for president, some Republican elites were plotting to diminish the political power of minorities and enhance those of white voters. Whatever their disagreements, the leaders of both the populist and establishment wings of the Republican Party have concluded that they cannot be allowed to lose power simply because a majority of American voters do not wish them to wield it.
  • Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate
  • Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187,
  • Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic.
  • This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them
  • a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.
  • Undetectable in the dispute on the right is any acknowledgment of the criticisms of liberal democracy by those who have been fighting for their fundamental rights in battles that are measured in decades and even centuries; that the social contract implicitly excluded them from the very rights white Christian men have been able to assert from the beginning
Javier E

Halloween Costume Correctness on Campus: Feel Free to Be You, but Not Me - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...iation-halloween-costumes.html

culture halloween costume political correctness sensitivity university

shared by Javier E on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The term “cultural appropriation,” which emerged from academia but has been applied more broadly — say, to refer to Washington Redskins fans wearing feather headdresses or white people in cornrows — has drawn ire from opponents of political correctness. But supporters say it captures a truth: that the melding of cultures is often about which group has the power to take symbols, styles or language from another.
  • The video issued by the University of Washington shows students from various ethnic groups and of various sexual orientations saying that almost any portrayal of them can cause a wound: For example, dressing in drag can denigrate the struggles of gay and transgender people.
  • At Duke University, the Center for Multicultural Affairs has filled its Facebook page with images of young people holding up pictures of offensive stereotypes, including white people in blackface and a man dressed as a suicide bomber, with the hashtag #OurCulturesAreNotCostumes.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Adopting physical or cultural characteristics of those with higher status/more power is fine. Adopting the same characteristics of those lower in status or power is risky. For example, virtually nobody would be offended if someone dressed up in full preppy regalia, complete with lacrosse stick, Dartmouth ring, and golden retriever. Many people would be upset if someone dressed up with a huge hooked nose, greasy cheek curls, and fur hat. Both costumes would be based on ridiculous stereotypes, but one would be funny and the other offensive
  • Students at various schools said in interviews that they viewed racial tension as the driving force behind many of the warnings, especially in the last few weeks, since stories about a fraternity party gone wrong at the University of California, Los Angeles, raised concerns at many schools. Some white students at the party dressed as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, with smudged faces and exaggerated, padded body parts.
  • And at the University of Michigan, the dean of students has a webpage titled “Cultural Appropriation — what is the big deal?” It urges students to ask themselves why they are wearing a particular costume, and then to consider how accurate it is in depicting a culture or identity.
  • I'm gay and there are lots of men dressing in drag at the local college. A woman dressed as a football player. So what? I laughed because some of them looked so ridiculous. I would look ridiculous dressed as a Samarai warrior. Isn't that the point? To be silly and ridiculous on Halloween. Maybe everyone should just wear black t shirts and grey trousers which is about the only thing left that seems to be safe to wear.
  • Mocking someone's culture is a cheap shot and often leads to worse. Also, if it's such a heinous imposition on you to respect other people's benign wishes regarding how you treat their culture, then maybe the problem isn't their sensitivity but your own.
  • There is a difference between dressing up as Kim and Kanye, both of whom have made a career of being campy exaggerations of themselves, and being culturally insensitive. Kim and Kanye, as willing celebrities, are legitimate subjects for parody.
  • One right our constitution does NOT bestow is the right to NOT be offended. Quite the opposit, the First Amendment, the right of freedom of speech, bestows the right TO offend.The harsh realities of being alive in an insane world ARE offensive. Being offended is a GOOD thing. It builds resilience, and character. It provides for personal growth. It toughens you.
  • It is somewhat different if you want to go as a celebrity. Suppose you want to go as Lebron James. The #23 jersey, and the baggy shorts, and the ball all make a great costume. If you are short like me, the joke is even funnier. If like me you are white, however, don't go in blackface. People who go in blackface (or something similar) know it offends and intend to offend. You might as well wear a sign that says, "I'm supposed to be Labron James, but in real life I'm am just a jerk."
  • Halloween, Ms. Garcia said, is now often about ridicule. “Dressing up as Pocahontas (or Sexy Pocahontas, let’s get real), is offensive because it takes the whitewashed version of a whole group of people that have been victimized and abused in their own land,” and presents it as “a thing one can just try for a night,” she said.
  • I find it quite sad that so many commenters here have such an odd interpretation of what's going on. What these Universities are so boldly doing is teaching our children how to navigate the increasingly diverse world we live in, and that mutual respect and understanding are more important than being able to act stupidly without regard for how it affects others. Do we expect everyone to be perfect? Of course not. All that is being asked is that we THINK before we act (or dress up), and use good judgement -- anyone that thinks that isn't a worthy aim by dismissing this all as "hypersensitivity" is seriously missing the point.
  • Dressing up in ways that mock POC cultures isn't harmless -- it perpetuates stereotypes that result in actual harm. To you, it's only a Halloween costume that you get to take off at the end of the night -- for them, it's their LIVES. To me, protecting POC and dismantling dangerous stereotypes is more important than your desire to dress up for Halloween without thinking about the impact of your costume.
  • There are stereotypes and stereotypes. Surely we can all agree that a Halloween party isn't an appropriate place to don blackface and pretend to be a negro minstrel. And there are tasteless jokes that offend us no matter how friendly the person telling them or the lack of intent to offend. I understand the desire to promote a sense of decency at a time and place where good judgment often goes out the window. But at the same time, if we lose all perspective and the ability to laugh at our own stupidity, then what we embrace is a culture of outrage. Those of us with unique and interesting backgrounds ought not to be so precious.
  • Some schools advise that borrowing from any culture is demeaning and insulting unless the wearer is a part of that culture. In other words, do not put on a karate outfit with a black belt, the University of Washington advised in the video it sent to students, unless you actually earned that belt.
  • Are you serious? Halloween costumes aside, what many universities are doing is shielding students from divergent points of view.
  • I'm not sure if donning a sombrero, a false mustache, and clothes suitable to a mariachi band is offensive. But I don't think that dressing as a geisha or a judoka is offensive in the same way that dressing as "a suicide bomber" is. But is dressing as Osama Bin Laden offensive, because it means wearing typical Arabic clothing? Would the clothing itself be offensive without racial stereotypes? Are Viking costumes offensive to people of Scandinavian descent? Are leprechaun costumes offensive to the Irish? Are Tyrolean costumes offensive to Austrians, Germans, and Swiss?
maddieireland334

How El Chapo Was Finally Captured, Again - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...l-chapo-sinaloa-sean-penn.html

shared by maddieireland334 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Stripped to his undershirt and covered in filth, the world’s most notorious drug lord dragged himself out of the sewers and into the middle of traffic.
  • The Mexican marines had been on Mr. Guzmán’s trail for more than six months, ever since he humiliated the nation by escaping its most secure prison through a tunnel that led into the shower floor of his cell.
  • But it had come at a cost. The authorities had swept through 18 of his homes and properties in his native lands. Days on end in the inhospitable mountains, where even a billionaire like Mr. Guzmán was forced to rough it, left him yearning for a bit of comfort.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Just two blocks away, a big order of tacos was picked up after midnight on Jan. 8 by a man driving a white van, like the one believed to be driven by Mr. Guzmán’s associates, witnesses said.
  • Hours later, on a highway heading out of town, the authorities finally got Mr. Guzmán, arguably the most powerful drug dealer in the history of the trade, for the third time since 1993.
  • Mr. Guzmán’s capture — described using information from interviews with witnesses and government officials, police reports, military video and Mexican news reports confirmed by officials — brings to a close, for now, one of the most exhaustive manhunts the Mexican government has conducted, an endeavor that drew in more than 2,500 people across the nation.
  • As the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mr. Guzmán is the embodiment of an identity the country has fought to shed for decades.
  • Either way, Mr. Guzmán represents a deep crisis for Mexico’s leaders as they struggle to define the country’s image.
  • His daring escape from prison last July, in view of the video camera in his cell, cast a lurid spotlight on the incompetence and corruption that has long dogged the Mexican state, driving many to view the government on a par with criminals.
  • El Chapo’s image, by contrast, seemed only to grow after his escapes. Perhaps more than the infamy he gained as a cartel chief — responsible for shipping tons of drugs to more than 50 countries around the world, with a wider reach than even Pablo Escobar in his heyday — Mr. Guzmán has earned a reputation as the world’s pre-eminent escape artist.
  • During the 17 months Mr. Guzmán was locked up, he met often with associates, not only to plan his legal defense, but also to plot his escape, Mexican officials said. His men purchased land within sight of the prison, constructing an outer wall and an unfinished building on the site. From there, a mile away, the digging began.
  • The Mexican authorities were monitoring the phones of Mr. Guzmán and his accomplices, reading the odd and unexpectedly tender exchanges between him and the actress. Mr. Guzmán promised to protect Ms. del Castillo as he would his own eyes, an affectionate phrase Mexican parents often say of their children.
  • Six days later, a detachment of marines swept in to capture Mr. Guzmán on his ranch, acting with information from American authorities. During the raid, Mr. Guzmán, who always took his two cooks with him wherever he went, darted into a gully as he fled, injuring his face and leg.
  • In the following weeks, operations continued in and around areas under Mr. Guzmán’s control. The brutal weather of an approaching winter also concerned the cartel leader — Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, where life could be more comfortable, was under constant surveillance. He needed to go somewhere outside his traditional zone of influence.
  • The government, aware that Mr. Guzmán was planning a trip to an urban center, followed one of his associates to a house in Los Mochis, on a busy road with a movie theater, restaurants and shopping nearby.
  • A commander ordered one of the marines to toss a grenade in front of one of the many doors blocking their advance. As the mission continued, two marines advanced down another hallway, pressing cautiously toward a staircase used by the surviving gunmen to escape to the roof, drawing fire away from the interior of the house.
  • After the marines arrived, Mr. Guzmán was taken to Mexico City in a helicopter, the capture finally over. Soon everyone was gone, leaving behind just one thing: an unpaid bill, according to an employee of the hotel.
  • To keep him locked up this time, the authorities said they would rotate his cells, never allowing him to stay anywhere long enough to burrow his way out again. Vigilance would be enhanced, with more officers and round-the-clock surveillance from extra cameras.
  • But to many, the longer the drug lord remains in prison in Mexico, the higher the risk of flight. His imprisonment could drag on for a year, perhaps longer, given the numerous — and creative — injunctions filed by his team of lawyers to fight his extradition to the United States, where he faces federal indictments on charges that include narcotics trafficking and murder.
malonema1

Ed Gillespie's Cynical Attack On Rights Restoration Would Drag Virginia Backward | Huff... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...rd_us_59efd190e4b04917c5941292

US politics

shared by malonema1 on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Those are the words Ed Gillespie uses to describe many of the 168,000 Virginians who have had their civil rights restored by my administration. In an ad clearly-designed to scare and confuse voters, Gillespie implies that giving people their voting rights back who have made mistakes and served their time somehow makes Virginia less safe. This is deeply misleading and the lowest point yet in a Republican campaign that has been based entirely on fear, division, and Trump-style dog whistle politics.
  • n 1902, Virginia’s constitution was amended to expand the policy of felon disenfranchisement and to add literacy tests and a poll tax. Discussing these changes, Virginia State Senator Carter Glass said, This plan will eliminate the ‘darkey’ as a political factor in this state in less than five years, so that in no single county... will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.
  • n 2009, Republican nominee and future Governor Bob McDonnell campaigned on restoring voting rights to those who had served their time. In 2013, my opponent was the sitting Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli. While we disagreed on many issues, both of us presented plans to restore voting rights to felons who had served their time. Until Ed Gillespie brought Trump-style divisive campaigning to Virginia, restoration of rights was generally a bipartisan issue.
saberal

'It's easy to dismiss Black women's lives': Texas drags feet on maternal mortality cris... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ty-crisis-black-women-medicaid

US politics crisis

shared by saberal on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • When medical staff prepped Shawn Thierry for an emergency C-section, she knew something was very wrong. After an epidural, excruciating pain ran through her legs. Soon, she could barely breathe.
  • The US has the highest maternal death rate among similarly developed countries and is the only industrialized nation where such deaths are rising. But according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Texas the maternal mortality rate is above the US average, at 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births.
  • They did not advance in 2019, or in the current legislative session which ends this weekend. Focused on restricting abortion rights, the male- and Republican-dominated state legislature has dragged its feet on maternal mortality.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “It was really striking,” said Dr Amy Raines-Milenkov, a University of North Texas Health Science Center professor and member of the review committee. “We found that most of these deaths could have been prevented but the system is just not set up to prevent them. And we found a large racial disparity, which is a reflection of how we in society value women, especially African American women.”
  • the ultra-conservative Texas Senate – which ushered through extremist anti-abortion bills in March – did not pass the bill until the final minutes of its session. Even then, the legislation was not what was proposed. Without explanation, Republican Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham reduced the year of coverage to six months.
  • “Black women are dying at an alarming rate for reasons that could be prevented and our state leaders cut down the main proposal that a state-appointed committee recommended to help them – why would that even happen?” said Jones. “I think it’s because it’s so easy to dismiss Black women’s lives.”
  • In an ideological quest to punish abortion affiliates, Republicans have decimated the Texas reproductive health safety net by blocking low-income Medicaid patients from receiving life-saving preventative care at Planned Parenthood, a move resulting in reduced access to contraception and increased rates of Medicaid births, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
Javier E

Why Did We Fall for the Victoria's Secret Angels? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...victorias-secret-angels.html

sexism attractiveness culture

shared by Javier E on 26 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Though on one level it was about (of course) the next iteration of pinup culture as defined by, and catering to, men, the success of Victoria’s Secret, once a mere catalog company, was also the product of a host of cultural phenomena as fashion, entertainment, branding, sex and kitsch all began to merge at the turn of the millennium.
  • the Victoria’s Secret Angels were part of the commercialization of the high/low moment that defined the cultural tenor of the late 20th century and is still going strong in collaborations everywhere.
  • First captured by Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1990 (and an accompanying book), it was later appropriated by fashion designers including Tom Ford, whose 1996 breakthrough Gucci show married the irony of kitsch to luxury materials (remember the GG clogs?) and an unabashed embrace of Studio 54 decadence
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  • It had an absurdist and knowing exuberance that appealed to both those who were intellectual slumming it as well as the mass market.
  • Victoria’s Secret understood the allure of the personal brand, hitting just at the moment before Instagram would transform the notion of fame.
  • By naming its Angels and promoting them as people and stars in their own right — by actually media-training them — they gave models power, profile and security.
  • All of which promised to serve as a springboard into the next stage of a career, not to mention making them more competitive with the actors who increasingly occupied the covers of glossy fashion magazines.
  • And Victoria’s Secret paid well: When Gisele Bündchen left the company in 2006, she was the highest paid model in the world, and, she told Refinery29 that Victoria’s Secret was 80 percent of her income.
  • The effect obscured the dark underside of the story: the crazy diets (no solid food for days before the show!) and fitness regimens (at least two workouts a day) that the models underwent in search of the elusive perfect body. (And there was that Jeffrey Epstein connection.) It pushed an unrealistic version of a woman’s body on the world.
  • the kind of arch, knowing performance of exaggerated femininity that the Angels were created to embody has neither ascended to the heavens or been consigned to hell, depending on your point of view.
  • Rather it still exists in the drag community (where, arguably, the antecedents of the Angels could be found all along), packaged for popular and positive consumption in the form of such shows as “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
aidenborst

Opinion | Supreme Leader of Voter Suppression - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-voter-suppression.html

Politics US trump crisis Culture gop election election-overview future-elections anti-patriotism exclusion

shared by aidenborst on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • we have trudged through these last months of President Trump trying, at every turn, to overthrow the will of the people by overturning the election he lost in November. Even if his ultimate loss is inevitably secured, it seems as though he is burning down the village as he retreats.
  • Trump has essentially claimed that fraud occurred during the election in large swing-state cities within counties that have large African-American populations — cities like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
  • The New York Times pointed out in November: “All three cities voted pretty much the same way they did in 2016. Turnout barely budged, relative to other areas in these states. Joseph R. Biden Jr. saw no remarkable surge in support — certainly nothing that would bolster claims of ballot stuffing or tampered vote tallies. Mr. Trump even picked up marginally more votes this year in all three cities than he did four years ago.”
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  • But that thought is antithetical to the war Trump wants to wage in America between the suburbs and what he deems problematic “inner cities” and “Democrat-run cities” — code for where concentrations of Black people and other people of color live.
  • It threatens to strengthen efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color who disproportionately vote for Democrats in the future.
  • “ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.” As Jay Willis pointed out in The Washington Post, “Even after Trump’s presidency ends, that message will pave the way for G.O.P. politicians and judges to further one of their party’s and the conservative movement’s most important ongoing projects: restricting voting rights.” He continued: “Trump lost this election, but he can still help Republicans win in the future.”
  • Trump not only attempted to erase Black votes after they were cast, he attempted to suppress them before they were cast. This is nothing new among conservatives, but Trump has dragged the practice out of the back rooms and into the light of day once again, giving it a telegenic, digitally contagious persona.
  • As Eric Levitz pointed out in New York Magazine: “The G.O.P. is now a party that has no compunction about nullifying the voting rights of its opposition to retain power. And once a party has liberated itself from the shackles of respecting its detractors’ rights, much else becomes permissible.”
  • But we don’t talk enough about how for Black people and other racial minorities, this isn’t only about faith. For them, it’s about being able to participate in elections at all.
  • Republicans plan to challenge the counting of state Electoral College votes. This effort, too, is expected to fail. But it will provide yet another spectacle on a grand stage for the lie that Trump and his sycophantic courtiers have sown: that the political machine in liberal cities full of Blacks, hipsters, gays and gangs stole elections from the real Americans in the hinterlands.
  • What we are seeing unfold before our eyes is not about building trust in elections, it is anti-patriotic. It is not about ensuring that every legal vote is counted. It’s about attempting to legally limit whose ballots can be counted.
  • Trump is attempting to drag Jim Crow into the Twitter era.
hannahcarter11

Here are a few takeaways from the final day of Trump's impeachment trial. - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-trumps-impeachment-trial.html

trump impeachment

shared by hannahcarter11 on 16 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Democrats needed 17 Republicans to vote with them to convict Mr. Trump of a single charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the Capitol assault. In the end, only seven broke ranks, one more than expected: Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina.
  • On Saturday morning, the Senate was prepared to hear closing arguments, but plans for a swift end were threatened with an 11th-hour piece of evidence that House impeachment managers argued was crucial: details about a phone call with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, in which Mr. Trump is said to have sided with the rioters as his supporters stormed the Capitol.
  • “If they want to drag this out, we’ll drag it out,” Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, said during a break in the proceedings. “They won’t get their noms, they won’t get anything,” she said, referring to President Biden’s nominees for top posts.
Javier E

How 'Surf City USA' became California's MAGA stronghold - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...h-maga-conservative-california

local politics US crisis culture partisan polarization

shared by Javier E on 02 Mar 24 - No Cached
  • Huntington Beach, one of Orange County’s largest cities, has long been associated with conservative beliefs, but its evolution in recent years shows how the bitter polarization of national politics has crept into even the most mundane municipal matters.
  • “It’s the tipping on its head of the old notion that all politics is local. Now, all politics are national, and I think the overall effect of that is really destructive,” said Jim Newton, a public policy lecturer at UCLA and editor of Blueprint magazine. “It takes a sharply divided country at the national level and drags that down into local disputes.”
  • Spurred by those early oil booms, the city embraced development and corporate interests, said Chris Jepsen, the president of the Orange County Historical Society, earning it “a reputation for being pro-business and ardently pro-property rights.”
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  • “Politics, Democratic or Republican, were not particularly important,” said Tom Harman, a former Republican state senator who got his start on the city council in the 1990s. “People didn’t run on party preference. They ran on what they could do in the community and how they could make the city a better place to live.”
  • It had long been a destination for surfing, but officials in the ’90s began leaning into that reputation to court the tourism industry. Huntington Beach became “Surf City USA,” a moniker pulled from a chart-topping song.
  • Two high-profile acts of white-supremacist violence — the shooting of a Black man in 1994, and the stabbing of a Native American man two years later — prompted the city to crack down on the groups who had flocked from across Southern California.
  • City police stepped up patrols, the council passed a human dignity policy condemning hate crimes, and officials started a human relations commission to combat bigotry. Ken Inouye, the founding chair of that task force and a 51-year resident of Huntington Beach, said residents from across the city “came together because we knew we were better than that.”
  • Both efforts were reversed when the current Republican majority took over the council.
  • In recent decades, sweeping demographic change has pushed Orange County to the left. But those shifts have been more subtle in Huntington Beach, and the city has retained its rightward lean. Unlike the county’s other largest cities, most residents are White and Republicans still account for the plurality of Huntington Beach’s registered voters.
  • During Donald Trump’s presidency, residents bridled at California’s pandemic restrictions, much as Trump did. Fierce protests became common, with crowds clogging the pier and Pacific Coast Highway to shout down coronavirus precautions or cheer Trump. Some of the rallies were organized by white-supremacist groups and turned violent.
  • Another inflection point came in 2021, when former mixed martial arts fighter and hard-right council member Tito Ortiz resigned from his post and the remaining members appointed a Democrat, Rhonda Bolton, in his stead. The move infuriated city Republicans, who wanted Ortiz replaced with an ideological equal.
  • “The tone of political rhetoric has gotten coarser and sillier as time has worn on,” she said. “And Huntington Beach is a reflection of what’s happening nationally.”
  • Carol Daus, who has lived in the city nearly three decades, said the council’s focus on contentious cultural debates has divided the community, pitting neighbors against neighbors. One example of the acrimony: Protect HB has hung posters across the city urging a “No” vote on the March ballot measures, but some 40 of those signs were recently vandalized with large green “Yes” stickers.
  • “This city during the past several years, following the Trump administration and covid lockdown, was like a volcano ready to explode,” Daus said. “And now it has.”
  • “I feel duped,” said Sue Welfringer, a longtime Huntington Beach resident and registered Republican. She voted for the four-person conservative slate because she liked their stances on homelessness and limiting development, but mostly she appreciated that they got along with each other.
  • “I almost don’t even want to vote at all because I don’t want to make another terrible mistake I regret,” said Welfringer, who opposes the council’s stances on issues like LGBTQ rights and voter ID. “I feel like they had a hidden agenda. And now I’m also worried what else is on their hidden agenda. I’m afraid to know what big issue is next.”
  • “Ideally, it would be wonderful if we could just focus on the roads and infrastructure,” he said. “But I think we’re in a time now where there really isn’t any such thing as a nonpartisan local focus anymore.”
  • But this dynamic has turned city council meetings into routine spectacles, where public comment drags on for hours and speakers hurl invectives at the seven members sitting on the dais.
  • Butch Twining, a candidate for city council, is one of three conservatives looking to build on the Republican majority, campaigning as a slate to replace Bolton and the council’s other two liberal members in November. A victory would give conservatives a 7-0 vise grip on the council.
Javier E

Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-measures-new-report-says.html

health US comparative international report

shared by Javier E on 11 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.
  • The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.
  • “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”
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  • The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.
  • Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.
  • Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.
  • The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. B
  • the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”
  • The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.
  • In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.
  • Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.  
  • Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages.
  • the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.
Javier E

Studying Recent Human Evolution at the Genetic Level - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-at-the-genetic-level.html

human evolution genetics research

shared by Javier E on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • researchers have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians different from other races.
  • The traits — thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, characteristically identified teeth and smaller breasts — are the result of a gene mutation that occurred about 35,000 years ago, the researchers have concluded.
  • When the mice grew up, the researchers found they did indeed have thicker hair shafts, confirming that the changed gene was the cause of East Asians’ thicker hair. But the gene had several other effects, they report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Cell. One was that the mice, to the researchers’ surprise, had extra sweat glands. A Chinese member of the team, Sijia Wang, then tested people in China and discovered that they, too, had more numerous sweat glands, evidently another effect of the gene. Another surprise was that the engineered mice had less breast tissue, meaning that EDAR could be the reason that East Asian women have generally smaller breasts.
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  • The finding that the gene has so many effects raises the question of which one was the dominant trigger for natural selection. Dr. Sabeti said the extra sweat glands could have been the feature favored by natural selection, with all the other effects being dragged along in its train.
  • East Asians are sometimes assumed to have evolved in a cold environment because of their narrow nostrils, which conserve heat, and the extra eyelid fat that insulates the eye. But the Broad team calculates that the EDAR variant arose about 35,000 years ago in central China and that the region was then quite warm and humid. Extra sweat glands would have been advantageous to the hunter-gatherers who lived at that time.
  • But Joshua Akey, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said he thought the more likely cause of the gene’s spread among East Asians was sexual selection. Thick hair and small breasts are visible sexual signals which, if preferred by men, could quickly become more common as the carriers had more children.
  • each of the effects of the EDAR variant may have been favored by natural selection at a different time. A series of selections on different traits thus made the variant version so common among East Asians. About 93 percent of Han Chinese carry the variant, as do about 70 percent of people in Japan and Thailand, and 60 to 90 percent of American Indians, a population descended from East Asians.
Javier E

Barack Obama and Bryan Cranston on the Roles of a Lifetime - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-cranston-table-for-three.html

obama presidency reflection politics

shared by Javier E on 07 May 16 - No Cached
  • BO: There’s a wonderful quote that I thought was L.B.J.’s, but I could never verify it: “Every man is either trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes.
  • I had the benefit of a great relationship with my mom, and she taught me the essential elements of parenting: unconditional love and explaining your values to your kids, having high expectations.
  • I live above the store. We’ve been able to schedule, pretty religiously, dinner at 6:30 every night for the last eight years. If I had a trip, I might be gone for a few days. But as busy as I was, I was able to go upstairs, have dinner. They don’t want you for more than an hour once they hit teenage.
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  • The one thing I never lost, in a way that somebody like L.B.J. might have — who was hungry for the office in a way that I wasn’t — is my confidence that, with my last breath, what I will remember will be some moment with my girls, not signing the health care law or giving a speech at the U.N.
  • What’s felt like a burden is seeing how politics has changed in ways that make it harder for Washington to work. There are a set of traditions, a constitutional design that allows someone like L.B.J. or F.D.R. to govern. And when those norms break down, the machinery grinds to a halt. That’s when you feel burdened
  • if you had to choose a moment in human history to live — even if you didn’t know what gender or race, what nationality or sexual orientation you’d be — you’d choose now. There’s power in nostalgia, but the fact is the world is wealthier, healthier, better educated, less violent, more tolerant, more socially conscious and more attentive to the vulnerable than it has ever bee
  • I’m old enough to remember the ’70s, when we were still getting out of Vietnam, and we had lost tens of thousands of young soldiers. And when they came back home, they were completely abandoned. We left an entire swath of Southeast Asia in chaos. In Cambodia, two million people were slaughtered — about four times the number of people who have been killed in Syria during this conflict. But we don’t remember that.
  • it’s true that the political landscape has changed in ways that are really unhealthy. But there are fewer lubricants to get things done. L.B.J. did great things, but he also relied on bagmen and giving them favors for which I would be in jail or impeached. People are surprised when I say that Congress is less corrupt now than it’s ever been.
  • my optimism springs from the fact that ordinary people are less narrow-minded, more open to difference, more thoughtful than they were during L.B.J.’s time. The question for me is how do I grab hold of that goodness that’s out there and drag it into the political process? I think it requires some new institutional structure for more citizen participation than we’ve had in the past.
  • The one area that I do feel confident about is the notion of an inclusive nation, that everybody is part of this story. That’s a running theme I’ve been faithful to throughout my presidency.
  • never underrate the power of stories. Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act done because of the stories he told and the ones [Martin Luther] King told. When L.B.J. says, “We shall overcome” in the chamber of the House of Representatives, he is telling the nation who we are. Culture is vital in shaping our politics. Part of what I’ve always been interested in as president, and what I will continue to be interested in as an ex-president, is telling better stories about how we can work together.
drewmangan1

A Pledge for More of the Same at the Pentagon - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513038

politics crisis policy trump

shared by drewmangan1 on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Mattis’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which convened today to consider his confirmation, raises doubts on that score
  • The strategic vacuum in which America’s endless wars drag on went unremarked upon.
  • On multiple occasions, Mattis referred to his determination to enhance the “lethality” of U.S. forces as if an inability to kill people and break things has hampered the effectiveness of U.S. forces. The problem is not a lack of lethality. It’s misguided policies based on a flawed understanding of what armed force can and cannot do, and when it should or should not be employed.
maddieireland334

Muslim mob attacked Christian homes in Egyptian province - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html

Attacks Egypt Muslims Christians Crisis

shared by maddieireland334 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • A Muslim mob ransacked and torched seven Christian homes last week in a province south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, after rumors spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman, according to a statement by the local Orthodox Coptic church.
  • The statement was signed by Anba Makarios, Minya’s top Christian cleric, who on Wednesday night told a talks show host on the private Dream TV network that the elderly woman was dragged out of her home by the mob who beat her and insulted her before they stripped her of her clothes and paraded her naked on the streets while chanting Allahu Akbar, or “God is great.”
  • Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 90 million people, have long complained of discrimination in the mostly Muslim nation.
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  • . The family of the Christian man had notified the police of threats against them by Muslim villagers the day before the attack, he said.
  • Extramarital affairs or sex between unmarried couples are taboo among both Muslims and Christians in conservative Egypt. They often attract violent reactions in rural areas, where questions of honor can lead to deadly family feuds that endure for years or result in ostracizing of the perpetrators.
  • Criminal gangs have often targeted wealthy Christian families south of Cairo in recent years, kidnapping their children for ransom. There have also been scores of cases in recent years of underage Christian girls lured away from their families by Muslim men who force them to convert and keep them in hiding until they reach adulthood
  • At least 35 percent of Minya’s population is Christian, the largest in any of Egypt’s 27 provinces.
  • If the case were different, and a Muslim man was having an affair with a Christian woman, the reaction would have hardly been so violent, he added.
Javier E

The Astonishing Age of a Neanderthal Cave Construction Site - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484070

human origins neanderthal france

shared by Javier E on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • After drilling into the stalagmites and pulling out cylinders of rock, the team could see an obvious transition between two layers. On one side were old minerals that were part of the original stalagmites; on the other were newer layers that had been laid down after the fragments were broken off by the cave’s former users. By measuring uranium levels on either side of the divide, the team could accurately tell when each stalagmite had been snapped off for construction.Their date? 176,500 years ago, give or take a few millennia.
  • Outside Bruniquel Cave, the earliest, unambiguous human constructions are  just 20,000 years old. Most of these are ruins—collapsed collections of mammoth bones and deer antlers. By comparison, the Bruniquel stalagmite rings are well-preserved and far more ancient.
  • Neanderthals must have been responsible. There simply wasn’t any other hominin in that region at that time.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Why did they build the rings and mounds? The structures weren’t foundations for huts; the chamber contains no stone tools, human bones, or any other sign of permanent occupation, and besides, why build shelter inside a cave? “A plausible explanation is that this was a meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior,”
  • Nor is it clear how the Neanderthals made the structures. Verheyden says it couldn’t have been one lone artisan, toiling away in the dark. Most likely, there was a team, and a technically skilled one at that. They broke rocks deliberately, and arranged them precisely. They used fire, too.
  • “The Neanderthal group responsible for these constructions had a level of social organization that was more complex than previously thought,” the team writes.
  • These discoveries are part of the Neanderthals’ ongoing rehabilitation.
  • we now know that Neanderthals made tools, used fire, made art, buried their dead, and perhaps even had language. “The new findings have ushered a transformation of the Neanderthal from a knuckle-dragging savage rightfully defeated in an evolutionary contest, to a distant cousin that holds clues to our identity,”
  • we have several lines of evidence showing that the cognitive abilities and behaviors of Neanderthals were complex,” says Marie Soressi from Leiden University. “But we had no direct evidence of their ability to build. That changes the picture for me. It’s puzzling to find such structures so deep inside the cave.”
cjlee29

Paul Ryan endorses Donald Trump - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...aul-ryan-endorses-donald-trump

shared by cjlee29 on 02 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) ended a month-long holdout by formally backing his party’s presumptive presidential nominee: Donald Trump.
  • On Thursday, the speaker penned a guest column for his hometown newspaper in which he trumpeted the controversial real-estate mogul as someone who could support the speaker’s conservative agenda.
  • Like many senior Republicans, Ryan’s endorsement came with its share of caveats about the speaker and the presumptive nominee’s remaining policy differences
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • id not signal any level of comfort with Trump’s sometimes bombastic style
  • The move marks a big about-face for Ryan, who four weeks ago declared he was “not there yet” in terms of endorsing Trump and questioned whether the controversial businessman was even a conservative
  • Ryan and Trump met once in person in mid-May when the billionaire crisscrossed Capitol Hill for meetings with House and Senate leaders.
  • Throughout the talks, neither side agreed to switch any of their policy positions,
  • endorsement should not be construed as the sort of “real unification” of Republicans
  • Ryan’s move may also signal that the speaker and other top Republicans are worried about keeping the House and Senate in Republican hands come November, and believe the best way to do that is to unite the party.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was among the first top leader to say he would back Trump.
  • Ryan became the last senior Republican congressional leader to throw his weight behind Trump’s candidacy.
  • Ryan’s chief communications adviser, Brendan Buck, said reporters need not mince words to figure out what it all meant.
  • “Paul Ryan in many ways is the antithesis of Donald Trump; he’s everything that Donald Trump is not. He’s a decent human being. He is a conservative. He is steeped in public policy. He cares about ideas. He’s a person who conducts himself with civility and grace in public life. He doesn’t put down his opponents,”
  • Ryan’s column in his local newspaper left no doubt where he stood after speaking “at great length” with Trump since he initially declared hesitation about his candidacy.
  • House Republicans will be inseparably tied to their toxic front-runner in November, case closed,
  • Ryan’s dragged out decision underscores how truly vulnerable Donald Trump makes House Republicans in swing districts
  • at odds with Trump’s positions on key policy planks dear to mainstream Republicans of the past 40 years
  • free trade agenda and the effort to rein in federal spending on entitlements.
  • Those issues were the hallmark of Ryan’s early congressional career and Trump stands squarely against them.
  • Trump’s proposals to ban all Muslim travel into the United States and the candidate’s brusque comments regarding minorities, women and the disabled gave Ryan pause.
  • Those concerns appear to remain, and Ryan vowed to speak out against Trump if he crosses lines again.
rachelramirez

Reforming the Republican Party After Donald Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...480249

republican donald trump politics US

shared by rachelramirez on 28 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • How to Save the Republican Party
  • Yet not perhaps since George McGovern in 1972 has a presumptive nominee so signally failed to carry the most committed members of his party with him.
  • What can more credibly be imagined, however, is an Independent candidacy that peels away 7-8 percent of the vote from a Trump-led GOP ticket, as John Anderson peeled votes away from Jimmy Carter in 1980, aiding Ronald Reagan.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • There, the Republican majority could—in some apocalyptic remake of Bush v. Gore—defy the popular vote and bestow the presidency this time on the third-place finisher.
  • ” Some anti-Trump conservatives will feel bound to oppose the election of Hillary Clinton—but they guess it wouldn’t hurt too much compared to the Trump alternative.
  • And if, like J. Alfred Prufrock, you murmur, “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all” then it’s time to reckon with the fact that the great American center wasn’t what you imagined it was at all either.
  • Trump’s almost certain failure in November will likewise drag after him other conservative causes, notably immigration restriction. Republican elites will be quick to blame a Trump loss on his immigration message
  • Much of the old conservative message is out of date. Not all of it, but much. Yet the people who formed the conservative coalition remain. They’ve misplaced their faith and trust in Donald Trump.
Javier E

Bacevich: After Iraq, War is U.S. - Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs - 0 views

globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/...bacevich-after-iraq-war-is-u-s

war legacy US foreign policy violence

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The disastrous legacy of the Iraq War extends beyond treasure squandered and lives lost or shattered. Central to that legacy has been Washington's decisive and seemingly irrevocable abandonment of any semblance of self-restraint regarding the use of violence as an instrument of statecraft. With all remaining prudential, normative, and constitutional barriers to the use of force having now been set aside, war has become a normal condition, something that the great majority of Americans accept without complaint. War is U.S.
  • By leaving intact and even enlarging the policies that his predecessor had inaugurated, President Barack Obama has handed these militarists an unearned victory. As they drag themselves from one "overseas contingency operation" to the next, American soldiers must reckon with the consequences. So too will the somnolent American people be obliged to do, perhaps sooner than they think.
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